745 Day Steak on Duolingo and Why My Chinese Sucks

745 days of studying Chinese, French and Spanish on the app.

Duolingo is an okay app, but it is prone to wokeness.  Some of its dialogues involve lesbian and gay couples.  One of its podcasts celebrated a French tranny in the Canadian armed forces.  I have to ignore that.

Can I speak French, Spanish or Chinese?  I can understand more French and Spanish than ever before. But I have no chances to converse in those two languages.  I don't speak enough Chinese to be thought of someone who can speak Chinese. This despite being in China since 2004.

What excuses can I offer for my Chinese deficiency?  I do have many.  

Firstly, I have never mastered the tones.  In slow motion, I would have to speak to use them correctly, but as soon as the speed goes up, as it would in real life, tones are forgotten about. And thus I am misunderstood.  I hoped I could pick up the tones by imitating others, but even saying a simple phrase like happy new year （新年好！）can result in befuddlement from the locals.  Can they even grasp what I'm trying to say?  I end up saying f**k it!

Secondly, I don't make much effort in trying to speak it.  The tone trouble makes me not bother most of the time.  I having been a loner or outcast and holder of wrong opinions, since me adolescence, am content to live in my own world, my own mental space as it were.

Thirdly (is that even a word?), my Chinese wife is no help.  She hasn't the patience to deal with my pronunciation trouble, saying it is horrible.  (My son who speaks English and Chinese is no help either, but that's another story)

Fourthly, I don't consume any Chinese pop culture.  I read books, listen to podcasts, watch foreign movies and all the TV series from Netflix and HBO and so on…. Modern Chinese culture is not very appealing in my opinion.

Fifthly, the locals don't speak the textbook Mandarin I study.  Much of what I overhear in Wuxi is incomprehensible.  It was only in Beijing, many years ago that I could walk about and hear Chinese that I could understand.

Sixthly, I can go days without engaging with locals.  I have no Chinese friends.

Seventhly, I'm in China to teach English.

Despite these excuses, it is still pathetic that my Chinese is so bad. I can only say in my defense that I am familiar with the language and can even recognize a lot of characters, and I do make the effort, minimal though it is, to study it.